Stop Online Piracy Act

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) currently being discussed in Congress has been much maligned with claims from many sources that the bill essentially amounts to online censorship and has too much room for abuse. V.i. Labs believes it simply wont stop online piracy.

Software piracy is a problem for software vendors, companies buying the software and users. Using pirated software can expose the organization to dangerous malware that often piggybacks on the applications to compromise computers and spread over the network. There have been a number of attempts to try to stop online piracy, such as Microsoft's Windows Geniune Advantage, which determines whether the copy of Windows installed on a computer is authentic. Congress is trying control the problem of pirate software with legislation such as the "Stop Online Piracy Act currently being reviewed in a House committee. The Senate has already voted to enact "Protect IP Act. "Trying to stop piracy by adding new tools to disable access to the piracy channels is a futile strategy for most software vendors," Vic DeMarines, vice president of Product Strategy at V.i. Labs, told eWEEK. These types of tactics would just create "new methods and approaches" for sharing pirated content, such as cyber-locker service providers, DeMarines said. Software vendors should track the adoption of unlicensed software, much in the same way they track licensed versions, and implement software amnesty programs. These compliance programs would allow organizations to self-report their transgressions and move toward legitimate software. Below are some ideas intended to stop online piracy that just won't work.